we went up late november of 2002 thinking that we could do a little snowshoeing in the area. to our disappointment we found very little snow and ended up looking for something to do. either my buddy or i had climbed up estes cone so we decided to go on up and check it out. there was a little bit of snow, enough to slap the ole snowshoes on from time to time and get our early season fix in. once we past moore's park the trail disappeared off into the snow, so figuring the only way to summit something is to start climbing straight up, we did a little trail cutting for about 2 miles up the side.... eventually we came across the lily lake trail and followed it way down to the junction where a ton of trails came together at the foot of estes cone, we started climbing. once we got to the top we spent about an hour running around the top trying to stay warm and out of the wind, snapped a few photos, eventually we broke out the hot chocolate and soup to have a little summit top lunch, then headed down. estes cone was a lot of fun, i really dug that hike and look forward to going back someday.